A US legal official - a woman (3)
I believe the answer is:
ada
'a woman' is the definition.
(woman's name)
'a us legal official' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'a' is found in the answer.
The remaining letters 'da' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ada that I've seen before include "- Lovelace, Byron's daughter & computer pioneer" , "Computer language; girl's name" , "Novel by Vladimir Nabokov" , "Palindromic girl's name" , "Programming language" .)